How to write ad copy for a market that has heard every promise already

Some markets have been sold to so many times that the usual moves backfire. Big promise, they roll their eyes. Testimonials, they assume they’re fake. Urgency, they assume it’s a trick.

My own market is one of them. People who run ads for a living have bought the courses, joined the masterminds, and heard every guru’s stock answer. They are about as jaded as buyers get.

Here’s how I write ad copy for skeptical audiences like that, step by step. It’s the same process whether you sell to media buyers, to people with a painful personal problem, or to anyone who’s been burned a few times.

Step one: find the answer they’re tired of

Every jaded market has a stock answer. The thing every expert in the space keeps telling them, that they’ve tried, that hasn’t fixed it.

In my world it was “creative diversity”. Everyone in the ads world preached it. You need creative diversity. And I’d sit there going, what does that even mean? Nobody could define it. I’ve been doing this a long time and I couldn’t give you a straight definition of it.

So I went directly counter to it. My position became that the answer isn’t creative diversity, it’s conceptual diversity: different ideas aimed at different people, not the same idea in thirty outfits. That contrarian stance, said in a way the market hadn’t heard before, is one of the main reasons that offer sells.

Your job in step one is to write down the tired answer in your market, in the exact words people use for it. That’s what you’re going to write against.

Step two: agree with the true part first

Going counter doesn’t mean telling people they’re wrong about everything. A deeply held belief attacked head-on just makes people defend it harder.

What I do a lot of the time is concede what’s true. Something like: you’re completely right about that, and that’s exactly why I built this. The reader relaxes, because you’ve just said out loud the thing they already know, and now they’ll hear the part they don’t.

Here’s one I use myself. Most people in my industry have been told that content does the targeting. I don’t dunk on that. I largely agree with it, with a caveat: it’s about 70% of the picture, and the missing 30% is the context your ad carries about the person’s actual life. Agreeing first is what gets the caveat heard.

Step three: prove it early, and a lot

This is where most ad copy for skeptical audiences falls apart. The claim comes first, which is fine. Then there’s a long explanation, then the proof at the very end.

A jaded market doesn’t give you that long. The way I think about it, this reader views anyone as guilty before they’ve had the chance to prove their innocence. So right after the claim, you show why you’re not guilty. Real numbers, real results, as much of it as you honestly have. For my own market it’s close to a fire hose, to the point where it almost seems excessive. Proof is what lets them open the door. Once they’re inside, you can have the actual conversation about why everything else didn’t work.

In an ad, that might just mean one specific, checkable result in the first few lines instead of a promise. And if you don’t have proof yet, making a claim believable before you have proof is the place to start. Just don’t borrow proof you don’t own.

Step four: put a new name on something true

With skeptical audiences, the more jaded and sophisticated they are, the more unique your ad copy has to be. They don’t want what they’ve heard before, so a new idea described in old words sounds like the old idea.

That’s why I name things. “Conceptual diversity” is just the true observation, given a name the market hadn’t heard. The name makes it feel new. The truth underneath is what makes it hold.

And it has to be true. I’m convinced people can feel it in their bones when something is inauthentic or not true, and a skeptical market feels it faster than anyone. Your goal is to find the truth and then put a new name on it, not to invent a clever name and hope. There’s a full piece on naming a mechanism so it sounds like a method and not a gimmick.

Step five: turn the hype down, not up

With a less sophisticated, more emotional audience, emotion and storytelling do a lot of the lifting. With a sophisticated one, hype makes people feel that something’s off. The more sophisticated they are, the more you need to rely on logic.

So cut the adjectives. Cut the “life-changing”. Stay away from anything that sounds like the free vacation stuff, because nobody believes it. Keep promises and guarantees out of the ad entirely (I explained why in why your guarantee isn’t winning the sales you think it is). In ad copy for skeptical audiences, plain, specific and a little understated reads as confidence.

One honest exception. Not every market is this jaded. I like going after people who know they have a problem but haven’t settled on a solution yet, because they’re not as skeptical and they’re more interested in what’s really going on. If your market is like that, you can lead with more emotion and story. Save this full treatment for the buyers who’ve seen it all.

What to do this week

Write down the stock answer your market hears from everyone, in their words. Then write one ad that opens by agreeing with the part of it that’s true, says plainly what that answer misses, gives the real idea a short name, and puts one specific, true result in the first three lines. No adjectives you couldn’t defend on a call. Run it next to your current best ad.

How do you write ads for a skeptical audience?

Do testimonials work in a skeptical market?

What is market sophistication in copywriting?